I know that the X58 chipset is "old news". I would like to see how a 980X stacks up vs the latest and greatest i7-3970X/60X. Utilizing MS WEI shows the i7-3770 can compete, somewhat, with the 980x. My question remains why there are no direct comparisons between LGA 2011 and 1366 top line processors. It seems as though Intel didn't want to be embarrassed. I suspect the delta is quite meager.
Thank You

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Thank you for your reply;
Those bench's show mixed results. Which was basically my point: With no competition Intel is pushing borderline improvements as "gold".
CPU performance is static with chipset advances giving modest improvement to overall usage. AMD's stumble necessitates: we need another "Hero".

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Bingo! Only people with a money tree would drop $1K on the 3970X. No point at all. Corporate clients would go for dual Xeons. Most 3930Ks I've seen hit 4.4-4.6ghz as well, making the 3970X a profit margin product for those who have no idea how to overclock.

I find Intel's strategy for their flagship platform is backwards. I completely understood why someone would pay extra for Socket 1366 as it came out nearly 9 months before Lynnfield on 1156. With LGA2011, Intel is actually behind their mainstream platform. Next year when Haswell launches, it will be faster in a ton of benchmarks since most programs are not multi-threaded. Haswell's projected 10% increase in IPC and IVB TIM hopefully replaced with proper solder would mean 5.0ghz+ overclocks. At that speed even IVB-E by Q3 2013 will be lame for most of us.

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I couldn't agree more, the 3930K is the true "winner" of this entire CPU generation as far as "OVERALL CPU PERFORMANCE" is concerned (not just gaming); it delivers 98-102% (depending on benchmark) the performance of the 2x more expensive 3960X but is only 50% the cost.

I have mine running at 4.8Ghz on a Rampage IV Extreme (1.385v) with 16GB G.Skill Ripjaws-Z 2133 9-11-10-27 (OC'd to DDR3-2540 10-12-11-31 1T 1.685v), and an EVGA GTX670-FTW @ 1455core/7825mem (will be adding 2 more soon, for 3-way SLI) with an EVGA GTX550Ti 2GB for PhysX (31%core/38%mem overclock).
For a "Single-GPU" system, it performs beyond what I could ever imagine!!
I have YET to have a single slowdown in Adobe CS6, any one of the two-dozen other Video and Photo editing programs I use, any of my pro audio editing/mixing software, or even games (exception of Metro2033 @ 1440p)... EVEN WHEN I have 2-6 different instances of Photoshop open, 2 different 1080p60 videos being edited (i.e. open), 1 raw audio track being edited (fully uncompressed studio recordings, huge files about ~50MB for a 3min track, and audio quality better than DVD-Audio), and then having FireFox open with 75tabs and Chrome open with 20 tabs!!!

Sure, 8core/16thread CPU's would be nice, but I am sticking with this 3930K for a LONG time!

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5.

Just another article showing me that I made the right call in picking up the 3930K for $475... Although I am curious as to why it is missing from your articles??? The 3930K would be an excellent counter-point, as it differs only by the 3MB L3 cache and 100Mhz from the 3960X, yet in a number of performance benchmarks the 3930K is able to come out ahead!

Well, I built my system for extreme-performance AND an excellent lifespan, and Socket 2011 is delivering!